How to Save $600/year on Cable

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Oct 272011
 

Don’t buy it. Seriously. I live in Northern Virginia, and the local monopoly cable provider is Cox. The cheapest cable plan costs $50/month. I wonder if that’s because they don’t have any competition? Makes you wonder.

With YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, wwiTV, FreeTube and others offering free online movies and television, why pay for hundreds or thousands of channels that you probably won’t watch? Seriously, their business model doesn’t make any sense. They force you to pay for a bunch of channels you don’t want when you just want the 3-5 channels you watch all the time.

Specific networks often offer their shows online a week or two after they air on TV. My roommates and I watch Jersey Shore (I know, I’m guilty) on MTV.com all the time. I also watch my favorite Daily Show and Colbert Report clips right from their website.

There are plenty of ways to get that media content you crave without paying for it. So save the $600/year you’d otherwise pay for cable and pay off your debt.

Do you pay for cable? Do you think it’s worth it? If you don’t, where to get your TV fix? Please share in the comments!

 

 Posted by Morgan Polotan at 2:37 am  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,
  • http://www.seventhstorm.com Ken

    Great idea. Thought about the same thing. However, the studios (and cable companies) are getting smarter. I know that a few of my favorite shows (e.g. Sons of Anarchy, Nikita) are only available online in some condensed format. It’s not the whole episode.

    I agree – cable subscription is out of control. And partly this is because the government has allowed both cable companies and telcos to charge whatever the hell they want.

    Let me tell you a story: before you were born, TV was free! Fine, there were probably only a few TV stations then. But we had more of a life as well. Back then, all you needed was a roof antennae or rabbit ears. The studios made their money from TV commercials. Fine.

    Then the cable companies came into the picture. No more antennas or rabbit ears. Now, you need a physical cable running in your apartment or home. Oh, and there would be more channels. But now, you have to pay for the subscription. Okay…

    Back then, nobody watched cable channels. Why? Their programming was a little quirky. But I watched them – because they had NO commercials. Well, eventually cable channel viewership increased (thanks to MTV). Now, everyone’s watching cable channels. And watching commercials on cable channels.

    The best part is this: now, we’re paying to watch TV with commercials. Awesome!

  • Morgan Polotan

    Haha I don’t know what it was like back in the rabbit ear days of TV, but I will say that I AM glad that we have so much choice when it comes to our entertainment options. Part of the problem is that cable providers are granted monopolies by the government, which as you said, makes them immune to competition that would otherwise drive down prices and increase quality, variety and choice.

    The reason TV is paid for with commercials is because it’s a public good, in the sense that my watching TV doesn’t diminish your ability to watch TV, and it’s hard to exclude non-payers from watching TV. This means that the supply of TV shows wouldn’t meet demand unless an alternative business model was found. Commercials have become that alternative business model.

    I do like your idea of not watching TV at all though! I find that most of the stuff on TV is garbage. I much prefer to consume ultra-customized content on the Internet :)

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